Badeau P.O.V.
Farewell, Video Stores
By Chelsea-Badeau
Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:22:27 GMT
The recent news that Blockbuster, America’s top movie rental chain, may be closing almost 1,000 stores by the end of 2010 has left me feeling sad and nostalgic. The writing has been on the wall for movie rental stores for quite some time now, but I don’t know if I’m prepared for them to completely go the way of vinyl records.
I have so many childhood memories of going to the video store with my mother and siblings, carefully looking through each aisle and row of video categories to choose that one special VHS for movie night. I loved reading the back of the boxes and seeing all of the movies I had never even heard of before. My choices were predictable at that age. I loved Grease!
I grew up in a large family and we had a longstanding movie marathon tradition every New Year’s Eve. We would walk out of the store in the freezing cold with huge smiles and big bags of clunky video tape cases. Each child would get to pick one movie and we would load up on sugary snacks and buttery popcorn and watch movies all night long (of course we would take a little break at midnight to watch the ball drop). The next morning we would sleep in and then take turns rewinding our tapes before returning them.
In my teen years, I would look forward to movie nights (or gabfests as my Dad called them) with my girlfriends. We would make the trip to the neighborhood video store a real outing. We would pretend that we were interested in the action flicks just to talk to the cute guys, or sneak in the “adult” room when the clerk wasn’t looking and giggle uncontrollably. After long, involved debates over comedy vs. romance vs. romantic comedy, we would finally settle on a movie just to realize that all 10 copies had already been rented out for the night. Then we would spend another period of time deciding on an alternative.
As a video communications major in college, I watched and analyzed more movies than I can count. I knew the name of every clerk that worked at the movie store. I went through several VCRs and accidentally broke a few tapes with all my rewinding, pausing, and fast forwarding. I analyzed Disney’s animated films for a senior project, so I still have a huge VHS collection of every Disney cartoon ever made. I paid a lot of late fees on movie rentals in those days. I won’t miss that aspect.
Like everyone else, I still watch tons of movies, but my trips to the video store have dramatically decreased in the past several years thanks to Netflix, On Demand, Redbox, and just having a busier life. I am sure some stores will hold on for years to come and there may be a few independent or foreign movie stores that live on, but I don’t see the industry as a whole being alive much longer. In a world where media has gone digital, brick-and-mortar video store chains no longer seem to make much sense.
I will always remember those video store trips with great fondness. Before every store closes, I will have to take my four-year-old daughter to rent a movie (DVD) so she can have at least one memory of that experience I enjoyed so many times over the years.
Message Edited by Chelsea-Badeau on 09-24-2009 05:23 PM
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Comcast.
Comment
Again, like I said in my other reply, It's the new world order taking over, So who cares about Blockbuster anyway.Sat, 26 Sep 2009 07:01:53 GMT | john0554